A Darkness of Light
by anothercontusion
Summary: Sylar had stopped talking about a month and a half into his incaraceration..." Set somewhere in AU season 1.


**A Darkness of Light**

Title: A Darkness of Light  
Author: anothercontusion  
Genre: Fanfiction, Heroes, horror, one-shot, slash  
Rating: M  
Warnings: Kind of dark mindfckery. Violence that could be considered torture and memories of murder. Slashy implications. Unbeta'd, so mistakes are all mine.  
Summary: "Sylar had stopped talking about a month and a half into his incarceration."  
Spoilers: Season 1? Kinda vague though.  
Note: Another little fic I wrote a long time ago. Probably in some kind of AU first season.

* * *

Sylar had stopped talking about a month and a half into his incarceration. No one had mentioned this to him, though. They had stopped talking to him the minute they threw him in the white room. Four walls, and a ceiling. Even the floor was white, spotless. There was a high bed without a mattress or a blanket and a toilet. Both white.

He hardly saw anyone - if they came in they drugged him through the ventilation first. He could always hear the hissing seconds before he slid into darkness. He learned not to panic around the third time. He would wake up with another prick in the crook of his elbow or pains and bruises elsewhere.

Sometimes he was strapped down when he woke up, wires and tubes attached to his body and stabbed into his veins. Then there was always pain. Lots of mind-numbing, wretched pain. Those days he could hardly breathe without screaming.

The only other sounds he heard that weren't his own moving about was the food tray sliding in the slot on the floor. He pretty much knew that it didn't come every day, although he'd lost all sense of time. His stomach was capable enough to let him know that. When it did come it came by way of formless, tasteless, and colorless supposed sustenance. He learned to eat it very slowly. The trays disappeared mysteriously, and he figured they must take them when he was unconscious. That is all depending if they decided to actually allow him to eat the conventional way.

Despite evidence, he had almost begun to believe that there were no other people around him. He was the only person left in the world, and he was doomed to the endless silence in the very, very small world of a room. There might be ghosts who moved about him invisibly. They might be the ones who he sometimes thought he felt whispering to him, telling him things that he couldn't understand.

He used to talk to whoever was listening. He used to cry out into the air, sobbing for someone to come to him, touch him, speak to him. He would beg for forgiveness, scream his penitence. He would do whatever anyone wanted, just to be free of this place. He would never kill again, he swore. Then it became a plea to end it all. Just kill me.

Any attempt on his part was interrupted by the prerequisite hissing. Hunger strikes were solved with feeding tubes.

He was forgetting who he was. It didn't take much time. Well, maybe it had. He couldn't tell, of course. It didn't matter who he was here. It didn't matter if he breathed, if he held his breath until he passed out; it didn't matter if he screamed or stayed silent for weeks; it didn't matter if he laid listlessly staring at the wall forever or if he was slowly dying of the pain that reached down to his bones with icy fingers.

He never thought anymore, and he barely remembered. He just was. And desired.

Sometimes faces would appear in his mind. He couldn't recall who everyone was, and he must have murdered some of them. Yes, he murdered many people.

There was a woman who used to tuck his shirt in and lock him in the cellar. She looked sad, and he thought she must be an angel. Sometimes the ghosts sounded like her. There was a man with thick glasses and gray hair. He was never looking back at him. There were many tormented faces, crying and screaming and begging.

And there was another person. This one didn't come with a name, either. But it came with a scent. He couldn't remember what it was but it made him think of books and tea. (What he wouldn't give for a book. He would probably just bury his nose in the pages and breathe it in for hours.) The man would smile - all teeth and sparkling eyes - and Sylar missed him.

It was hardest to remember anything when he couldn't breathe for the pain. He knew even he could never have deserved this. But he must, because here he was, though it was hard to think of anywhere else to be.

He was screaming soundlessly as the shocks tore through his body and straining against the straps holding him to the table when he imagined the door opened and someone stepped through.

He had forgotten the door was there. It just swung open with a muffled whoosh and Sylar could almost feel the waft of air that it caused. His vision was too blurry to make out the face that bent over him.

There were two voices, he thought. Not so much different than the usual ones. Except these had emotion, whispering loudly and tensely. He could almost tell that they were saying words.

Another shockwave hit him and he hiccoughed deep in his throat, spasming in his bonds.

"Hold still."

That was the first command Sylar had heard in god knows how long and he tried his best to obey as the bearer of that strikingly familiar voice reached over him and something clicked. The shocks stopped immediately and left him aching and completely unable to move, even as someone pulled the straps loose with the sound of crackling Velcro.

A harsh voice asked a question from farther away, and the soft, accented voice answered. "Help me out here, he's helpless."

A hand touched his face and then took his arm. Four hands helped him sit up and off the table. They almost dropped him and he grunted in pain at the movement.

An arm wrapped around his waist and he was leant into someone's embrace as he was dragged slowly from the room. From the world.

He turned his head as best he could and the face came into focus for a moment. It's one he remembered. "You're getting out of here, Sylar. Just hang on."

Sylar sobbed once before he passed out.

FIN

_A/N: Comments and criticism are welcome :)_


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